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Dec 21, 2017 Web Exclusive By Charles Steinberg

There’s something unceremonious about releasing a three-song EP as your last recording. Yet in a way, the songs on Wild Beasts’ Punk Drunk and Trembling can be received as a final artistic statement in keeping with what has made them a band refreshingly elusive from containment stylistically. The cover art tells you these were outtakes from last year’s resonant album Boy King and the funky lead-fisted production of John Congleton that marked that record punches through the short 11-minute play time. This is particularly so on “Last Night All My Dreams Came True,” a song that also showcases the consonance of Tom Fleming’s baritone and Hayden Thorpe’s falsetto that together always struck sensually genderless chords.

These three songs embody the different environs that Wild Beasts inhabited over their 12 years together, from the shoulder loosening liberation of the title track that recalls the energy of cool tone danceables like “Bed of Nails” and “A Simple Beautiful Truth,” to the slow emotive current of “Maze” which sees them in the elongated wavelength of “End Comes Too Soon” and “Dreamliner.”

It has been borne out that bands aren’t always fully aware of how admired they were until they decide to walk away. The boys from Leeds have received heapings of fan acknowledgment in the wake of their announcement to bring it to a close and as a parting gift to the faithful, Wild Beasts are releasing a live studio album in February. Let’s hope that the official call of quitting is formal code for taking a break after a decade of recording and performing. As “Maze brings the EP to an abrupt close in a gust of wind, for now, we can only hope that a breeze of fortune will one day blow this unconventional, boundary-stretching group back to our ears again. (www.wild-beasts.co.uk)

Author rating: 6.5/10